Too many questions / A solution for homeless, but with many uncertainties

To its credit, and perhaps the relief of some 800 people living on the streets of downtown, a San Diego City Council committee takes on the intractable issue of homelessness today. But what it will do – and what it should do – are anything but clear.

On the table is a proposal, just recently made public, to convert the historic San Diego Athletic Club building that now houses the World Trade Center on Sixth Avenue near A Street into housing that would also provide support and services for 225 chronically homeless residents.

Providing permanent supportive housing for the homeless, most of whom have some combination of mental illness and drug/alcohol addiction or have a significant physical or medical disability, is a commendable goal. For San Diego, it is years in the making and represents an initial step at meaningful implementation of the 10-year Plan to End Chronic Homelessness. And it would put an end to the City Council’s annual battles over a temporary winter shelter downtown.

But nearly everything about this particular proposal comes with serious questions attached.

• The location. What would the impact of housing for the homeless be on the surrounding area in the heart of downtown? A lot of smart people involved in the issue for years argue that it would not negatively impact the area. But there is also much skepticism, if not outright opposition, coming from nearby businesses and residential towers.

• The cost. Depending on which estimate is used, it would cost $31 million to $34.4 million – a cost per bed of roughly $138,000 to $153,000.

• The financing. It would be paid with up to $13 million in redevelopment funds from the Centre City Development Corp., $2 million from the San Diego Housing Commission, $14 million from a complicated state tax credit program and $1.5 million from a Veterans Affairs grant. The tax credits and the VA grant both depend on beating out other proposals in a competitive process.

• The big legal question. Would development of this 225-bed project satisfy activists who sued the city in 2004, winning a settlement approved by a federal judge prohibiting San Diego police from issuing “sleeping tickets” to homeless people on the streets anywhere in the city from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. That ban on enforcement of the illegal-lodging ordinance has led to scores of homeless rolling out blankets and tents on the sidewalks and in doorways nightly without fear of being ticketed or rousted by police.

The trade center project is proposed by a partnership of a San Diego affordable housing developer, a Los Angeles-based homeless service provider and the Family Health Center of San Diego. The Housing Commission recommended it over a competing proposal from Father Joe’s Villages and another San Diego-based affordable housing developer. That team proposed to build new housing for 350 homeless but at a cost of $43.3 million at a site adjacent to the existing Father Joe’s Villages in the East Village.

The trade center building is owned by the city, which, under the proposal, would sell it and possibly an adjacent parking garage for up to $10 million to the development team or perhaps to the Housing Commission and CCDC. Complicating that issue is the fact that there already is an offer on the table from a woman identified only as Virginia Herrera Gonzalez to buy the trade center building from the city for $7.8 million. Gonzalez is said to be part of a group of developers who seek to improve the property under its current commercial and office zoning status.

How all this will play out at this afternoon’s meeting of the council’s Land Use and Housing Committee is anyone’s guess. Any action would still require full council approval.

This page has long been supportive of permanent solutions to homelessness, not just downtown but citywide and throughout the county.

And we might in the end support this proposal. But the public has had little chance to consider the potential ramifications. The full council should not approve exclusive negotiations with the partnership until the many questions can be answered.